The Galaxy Builder (12 page)

            "This ain't no joke, slowpoke," the
sergeant returned.

            "Look," O'Leary essayed desperately,
"this is some kind of ridiculous mistake. I was just out for an evening
constitutional, and—"

            "This here whole area east of the mine is
off limits to all personnel, dopey," the noncom cut him off. "If you
din't see it on the tube, you shoulda read the signs—and that bob-warr you cut
mighta give you a hint, too." The sergeant undipped a microphone from his
belt and muttered into it. The copter moved off.

            "I didn't see any barbed wire, and I don't
watch the tube, " Lafayette countered in the abrupt silence.

            "Tell it to the judge, Moe," the cop
said wearily as he fetched his cuffs around from his hip-pocket region.
"Just don't try nothing. So far all we got on you is a small federal rap
for aggravated trespass." He beckoned, and Lafayette stepped forward and
extended his wrists, which were at once encircled with cold steel which closed
with a decisive click. The cop spun O'Leary and prodded him.

            "Right back this way, pal, and we'll give
you a nice ride in the whirlybird."

            Lafayette started off obediently, then shied at
a sudden sound from the brush as a dimly visible Marv burst from cover to barrel
into the cop, knocking him down. Marv caught the pistol and aimed it at the
fallen policeman's head.

            "I'll hold this sucker, Al, while you beat
it," Marv grunted. "I never seen a rod like this one before, but I
can tell which end of it the bad news comes out of."

            "Marv, wait," Lafayette yelled,
"don't spoil things! We're marooned in the middle of a swamp, and this is
our way out, so just give the sergeant back his gun he dropped and let's go
quietly." He extended a hand to assist Dubose to his feet, muttering and
slapping at the mud on the uniform.

            "Al, wait!" Marv keened. "You
don't mean to go off with this here magician which he come in a dragon! It
might come down and eat all of us!"

            "Don't be silly, Marv," O'Leary said.
"It's just a helicopter."

            "Don't care what you call it, I seen it
sitting right there in thin air, with that eye shining down. It seen us, all
right—and here it comes back!"

            O'Leary hooked Marv's ankle with his toe as the
latter turned to bolt back into the swamp. Marv hit with an elaborate splash as
the copter's rotor beat the air directly above with a deafening
whap! whap!

           
"Lemme go!" Marv screamed.
"I can hear it flappin' its wings! It's gonna strike any second!" He
leaped up convulsively as the ladder struck the mulch a foot from his head.
Dubose hauled him to his feet.

            "Up," he snapped. "I'll leave yer
hands free till we're inside." He released O'Leary's hands as well,
ordering both men up the ladder. Lafayette rubbed his cold-stiffened hands
briskly to restore circulation.

            Marv complied, moaning. O'Leary followed,
mounting up into the warm glow from the open canopy while an ice-cold tornado
beat down at them, causing the flexible metal-link ladder to buck and sway
until the weight of Sergeant Dubose at the bottom stabilized it.

            A fat-faced cop in the pilot's seat eyed the new
arrivals over his shoulder, a dubious expression on his meaty features.

            "What you two bums think yer gonna complish
in the Little Dismal this time o' night?" he inquired without interest.
"Anyways, the comet hit a good five mile west of where we're at now."

            "What comet?" Lafayette asked.
"We didn't know about any comet; we were just out for a stroll."

            "Sure, and I'm waiting for a
elevator," the pilot returned cynically. "What comet, eh? How many
comets you think hit here to Colby County lately?"

            "Colby County?" Lafayette echoed.
"Oh, no!"

            "Don't go knocking the county," the
cop commanded. "Finest little county in this end o' the state."

            "How far are we from Colby Corners?"
Lafayette asked.

            "Oh, you mean the ghost town. Where you
fellows from, anyways? Reckon even a tourist oughta know where the Corners is
at. 'Bout six mile north," he concluded. "Closed anyway, this time o'
night."

            "What do you mean, 'ghost town'?"
Lafayette demanded. "The last time I saw it, it was a thriving community,
with a high-school team rated third in the state."

            "You must be older'n you look, young
feller," the cop commented as Dubose arrived and settled himself,
unlimbering his cuffs.

            "Hey, Al," Marv said weakly as the
copter lifted suddenly, banking off steeply in a climbing turn. "Now! Nows
the time to do one o' your swell tricks."

            "Quiet, you!" Dubose barked; and to
Lafayette, "Any tricks, Bub, and I'm gonna hafta start rememberin'."

-

            It was almost dawn. Warm and dry in a cosy cell
at County Jail, Lafayette and Marv sat disconsolately on their Spartan bunks,
watching the pinkening of the rectangle of sky defined by the small high barred
window.

            "Don't worry, Marv," Lafayette said
encouragingly to his cellmate, whose expression suggested that he was on death
row at Sing Sing, rather than in a provincial drunk-tank. Marv moaned.

            "I dunno if General Frodolkin even could
bust me outa this dump," he said, "even if he knew these magicians
had one of his best boys locked up here."

            "We're not in Aphasia any longer,"
Lafayette told his cellmate. "And that's good in a way; I mean, I'm
responsible. I was trying to shift us back to Artesia, and my mind wandered; I
got to thinking about the old days when I happened to slip back to Colby
Corners and wound up in jail. Now I'm back there again, and bum-rapped again.
Sorry to get you mixed up in this, Marv, but we'll get out somehow. Let's
consider the situation."

            "The situation, wise guy," said a
heavy voice over the other side of the barred door, "is you dummies don't
never seem to learn nothing."

            Lafayette looked up to see a strange face
peering in at him. Or, corrected himself, a face not precisely strange, but
only half-familiar.

            "Belarius!" Lafayette cried, coming to
his feet. The face at the door recoiled as O'Leary approached.

            "Where's Frumpkin, your old sidekick?"
O'Leary demanded. "I've got an idea he's holding Daphne somewhere against
her will—at least I hope it's against her will!"

            The newcomer, who Lafayette realized wasn't
Belarius at all, but merely a look-alike, this one half-shaved and with acne
scars, paused in his retreat to look distastefully at O'Leary.

            "Look," Lafayette said desperately,
"I know we haven't always gotten along, but let's let bygones be bygones;
get us out of here."

            "I don't know whom you think I am,"
the Belarius-like stranger replied coldly. "But let me set you straight:
I'm Sheriff George B. Tode, and I run a clean administration, and it's about
time you chiselers learnt that."

            "Not 'whom', Lafayette said severely.
"After the verb 'to be' the nominative case is used: 'I don't know
who
you
think I am'," he quoted.

            "I know durn well whom you are," the
sheriff came back. "You're the latest in the series of Light-Fingered
Looies Jukes has been sending in here to try and get a piece o' the comet, so's
to embarrass me."

            "To try
to
get a piece of the
comet," O'Leary corrected. "What comet?"

            "First and only one to hit here in Colby
County," the cop said. "Don't play dumber'n what you already
are."

            "You can leave my IQ out of this, you
half-witted flatfoot!" O'Leary retorted hotly.

            "Nix, Al," Marv hissed. "You were
gonna get this feller to get us out o' here, remember?" Then he addressed
the sheriff: "Ya gotta excuse my pal," he explained. "He's got
problems, you know, upstairs." Marv tapped his unkempt head to make his
meaning clear. "But he ain't a bad guy, except when he turns inta a bird
or something.
Then
he can get mean. But if you was to just kind of let
us outa this here dungeon, you could get on his good side, and he might fix you
up with a solid gold bathtub or like that."

            "You tryna bribe me, sucker?" Sheriff
Tode demanded. He looked both ways and pressed his face closer to the bars.
"Did you say 'bathtub'?"

            "Whatever you like," Marv assured him.
"If you prefer buckets o' emrals and rubies and ten-dollar bills, Al, he
can—" Marv broke off as Lafayette jabbed him in the side with an elbow, at
the same time easing him away from the door.

            "Marv was just kidding around,
Sheriff," he said. "He doesn't have any gold bathtubs on him—or even
any buckets. Of course, he might turn up the odd sawbuck you boys missed when
you cleaned us out."

            "I never missed no sawbuck," Tode
replied hotly. "When I shake a feller down, I don't miss nothing. Hey,
where you going?" He concluded, as Lafayette, easing sideways, passed from
the officer's field of vision.

           
Or almost nothing,
Lafayette told
himself, checking his secret pocket for the flat-walker, finding it still
safely tucked away.
Not that he'd have known it was important, even if he'd
found it,
he reflected.

-

            The sheriff was now bawling for someone named
Cecil, turning after each yell to order Lafayette to stand "... whur I can
see ye!" Marv eyed Lafayette anxiously while making soothing sounds
directed to the suspicious sheriff.

            "It's all right, Shurf," Marv
reassured the cop. "Old Al's kinda shy is all. He's right here a-hiding in
the corner. No need to do nothing hasty, Shurf, sir."

            Cecil arrived, looming six inches over his
chief's considerable bulk. "What's up, boss? These here jailbirds try
something funny?"

            "One of 'em's hiding, Cease," Tode
explained. "Says he's shy, but I don't like it, a feller just kind of
sliding sideways out o' sight whilst I'm talking to him. Ain't
respeckful."

            "Durn right, Shurf," Cease replied
eagerly. "Just leave me in there to take a few minutes to teach 'em a few
manners, Colby County style."

            "No need, Mr. Cecil, sir," Marv cried.
"We got more manners'n we can use now, don't we, Al?" He looked
imploringly toward O'Leary who, flat-walker in hand, was facing the masonry
wall.

            "Take it easy, Marv," Lafayette said
reasonably. "I'll be back for you in a few minutes." As he activated
the Ajax device, he heard the rattle of a key, and from the corner of his eye
saw the heavy steel-barred door swing in, slightly obscured by a haze which
thickened to an opaque blackness shot through with tiny darting lights—random
high-speed cosmic rays striking the retina, as Sprawnroyal had once explained.

            As from a great distance, O'Leary heard Cecil's
bellow. "Hey, Shurf, one of these crud-bums has busted out!"

            The light-shot darkness lightened to watery
gray, and through an open doorway O'Leary saw the Man in Black speaking
urgently to a coarse-looking middle-aged woman, though his words were
inaudible. Lafayette approached, looked into the vast, dim room he had seen
before. Far away across a faded pseudo-oriental carpet, Daphne—he was almost
sure—stood beside a bric-a-brac-cluttered end table, her shoulders slumped
dejectedly. Then she looked up: It
was
Daphne. Lafayette started through
the door, encountered an impalpable resistance against which he lunged in vain.
Frumpkin looked up at O'Leary, at once dismissed the frumpy woman, and started
toward him. Daphne hurried forward to come up behind Frumpkin.

            "Clobber him, Daph!" O'Leary wished
frantically. But Daphne stopped and spoke quietly:

            "You promised, milord." Fumpkin
whirled and snarled something at her. As Lafayette tried desperately to push
through the barrier, the pale light faded to impenetrable darkness and profound
silence. He pressed forward—and the barrier melted.

            Then the darkness cleared and he was looking at
a brown-painted concrete-block wall with a tattered and fly-specked poster exhorting
the viewer to reelect 'Hoppy' Tode as Sheriff of Colby County—a document,
Lafayette reflected, which, though unprepossessing, had apparently proven
effective. Then he noticed the sheriff himself standing a few feet away,
staring through the barred door through which Cecil's complaint was still
issuing:

            "... let one of these here sneak thief s
break outa our jail! Jukes ain't going to like it, Shurf, and you gotta
election coming up!"

            Tode turned casually, then started violently at
the sight of O'Leary standing nearly at his elbow. He tugged his hogleg from
its holster and aimed it at Lafayette's face.